Open Studio: New Locked Post Teaser

Patreon Feedback Product Betas
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Hey creators!
We’ve been exploring ways to help you better communicate the value of membership to your fans. We’ve heard from potential patrons that they want to see a teaser or preview of your locked content, to better understand what is being offered through your membership.

  • Are you currently creating teaser text for your posts? Why or why not?
  • Would you want to provide fans with teasers of locked content for all post types or specific ones?
  • How much content would you want fans to be able to preview for text posts?
  • What are your thoughts on having a dark overlay on image posts?

Below are some mockups of what this could look like for image and text posts only.

post%20teasers
post teasers.jpg3261×3609 1.47 MB

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I don’t, I honestly forget that that feature is there.

Maybe we could pick and choose? Perhaps an “all” option and manually selecting ones?

Maybe have a slider or a marker, a way to tell Patreon to “cut the text off here” sort of thing. Like, below this line = patrons only.

I’ve not been the biggest fan of the darker blurred version of image posts, but I don’t think that makes them inherently bad. As someone who posts mostly images and does art, having instead a way to post a teaser image, and have the rest of the post/gallery hidden for patrons only would be fantastic for me. :slight_smile:

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  • no, it’s not a useful feature when 99.9% of my posts are image based. i rarely write anything in the about section that could potentially be considered a ‘tease’ to non-patron viewers.
  • the only teasers i’d want to provide are ones that i can 100% control myself and it’s not a preset image.
  • not relevant to my content
  • no please! please do not! this would not be an effective way to ‘tease’ my work, it would just be an easy way for people to view it without paying. i’d much prefer to have total control and make my own teasers. maybe an option to upload a second image as a teaser but only if i have one. otherwise, have it fully blurred out like it is now.
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We’re not using teasers, mostly because our text posts are pretty self-explanatory, and our other posts are primarily audio. I can see that teasers or previews would be a big help for some kinds of locked content, but I really don’t think that it would be of much to use to ours.

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  1. Are you currently creating teaser text for your posts? Why or why not?
  2. Would you want to provide fans with teasers of locked content for all post types or specific ones?
  3. How much content would you want fans to be able to preview for text posts?
  4. What are your thoughts on having a dark overlay on image posts?
  1. No because I don’t write much since I mostly post images.
  2. Sure. But I only post images so other post types are less relevant to me personally. But I would like text posts to also have featured images for teasers, instead of just plain text.
  3. Only a specific detail, like a cropped version of a full illustration.
  4. It shows too much. I would prefer to upload my own featured image/teaser for every post instead.
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I try to include teaser text whenever I remember. I do feel it would help to have a 20-30 extra characters, but mostly, as a creator whose content (especially locked content) is not the image itself, I would like the option to always display the full header image for locked posts, since - for me - that’s the best form of promotion for the post.

Obviously this would have to be optional, and creators whose art is a major part of their content would have very different needs (perhaps options for built-in crop/blur on teaser images, or simply an option to add a custom teaser image so the artist could crop/blur/filter however they prefer, though that would be more work for them).

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  1. I don’t use the teaser text since the title of the post itself is self explanatory.
  2. No, I do that on my own social media by cropping art and posting previews to entice ppl on the fence to sign up.
  3. Not relevant to my type of work.
  4. Images are the bread and butter of my content, but 95% of the time my image posts are crops anyway and the full size image is an attachment, so I guess this doesn’t matter for me very much, but I think if you go that route you need to let creators toggle what level of blur they want, otherwise I can see this being a huge pain for ppl who post full images as posts.

I’m honestly not sure why teaser previews are a thing ppl apparently want, but that’s also probably due to the fact that since I’m an adult content creator I’m not discoverable on the platform at all, so anyone who gets to my page is doing it through my own social media channels which have small content previews and teasers anyway. I guess I assumed it was similar for most ppl advertising their Patreon?

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Yes, when I remember, and when the title is not self-explanatory

Making it an option for every post would be ideal

I prefer to write my own teaser text

No thanks, I’d rather create my own teaser images

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Audio posts are content too! Would love to discuss ways to effectively tease audio posts, like what information is relevant to my listeners, how much of the text description would make an effective tease, etc. but I guess this one isn’t for me sadly.

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We’re excited about a future where creators could curate the teasers of locked posts, and for any medium (audio too @YuuriVoice!). Right now, we’re looking to corroborate with data what we’ve heard from fans, and understand what sorts of teasers can be effective. We’re looking to do so in as clean and quick way as possible, before we look into building more advanced tools into your posting workflows. We appreciate the feedback!

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Are you currently creating teaser text for your posts? Why or why not?

I do use teaser text for the most part because it is what shows up in link previews when i link to those posts in social media. (when the previews decide to actually work. It’s been extremely spotty and annoying.) Sometimes I’ll send the link to myself, screencap the preview image and post that (because images get much more attention online than only text and sometimes that’s just easier than making my own crop at the time. Especially if i’m mobile.) I’d rally like for that preview BG to be something -I- choose though. It’s kinda bland otherwise.

Would you want to provide fans with teasers of locked content for all post types or specific ones?

Yes. rarely have time to do it so when i do, i will crop the image and post a teaser on social, linking to my patreon or that post. If it’s possible to create a crop/thumbnail from one of the images posted to patreon, for the teaser, i would be 100% on board.

How much content would you want fans to be able to preview for text posts?

Well, i’d want to pick and choose which stuff has a teaser in the end. So i can’t really answer this. Also i don’t really do text only posts that are private really. So i guess this doesn’t super apply to me, but if i did, i’d want to be able to put a code or a line to tell it where to cut. Kinda like what @sambeawesome said.

What are your thoughts on having a dark overlay on image posts?

I’d prefer a crop/thumbnail option/make my own teaser with the join button overlay. Maybe the option for the black overlay? But it’d also be great if the button could be editable. Sort of like how our title “creating __________” on our home pages are. Instead you could choose “Join __________” so i could put something like “Join to see the full image” or if i have a commission post thats only open to patrons i could put “Join to get early access to commissions” etc etc. That way in context to the post, it makes sense.

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I do create teaser text. I want folks who aren’t patrons yet to have a better idea of what is inside.

Yes to all, but perhaps with a little bit of control when i make the post.

Maybe a few lines of text, I am especially interested in images being visible, even if they are slightly greyed out. I think the locked posts look really bad and uninviting without images being visible at all.

I echo the sentiments above about audio, too! I release bonus patron-only podcasts and I would love for their to be a teaser of that audio too!

I don’t mind it, but it would really be cool if we could choose on a post by post basis how we wanted to tease images, if at all.

THANKS for this! I am excited to see where this winds up and am grateful for the change to weight in!

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Sometimes but only rarely because I don’t always have the energy to craft them. They’re useful in theory for social media posts but on the other hand I always post with a custom teaser image so…shrug?

Ideally all post types but customizable by type. I like @Temrin’s idea.

I want to be able to use my own thumbnails that I already make for social media.

It gives away too much. Dark overlay and slight blur might be better. But ultimately I want to choose my own crop of the image or make my own thumbnails.

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I do use the teaser text and I love the option of having a faded image show as on your sample! :slight_smile:

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I don’t, as my titles are self-explanatory and my content is image-based. Being able to create more types of teaser content - teaser images, or teaser videos - would be more useful to me than some text that probably already exists in the title.

I would LOVE to be able to provide a “teaser” by creating a fully public post with the downloads locked behind a tier. Or to be able to set the first image in a gallery post as free, but the remaining images are locked. Or being able to lock specific items behind specific tiers in the same post - ie. a free post with the gallery unlocked at $1, and with $5 attachments. More flexibility in general with what is free and what is tier-locked, so I don’t have to make three or more separate posts for different levels of the same content.
But to actually answer this question, I don’t see why all post types shouldn’t be able to have a teaser mode. Just because I can’t think of a use-case for previews in certain post types doesn’t mean they’re not useful. Many of us already create “preview” material for social media. Being able to plug that into one of our posts - whether it be a preview video, preview image, preview audio, whatever - would be a great way to cross-utilize those social media previews.

I don’t generally use text posts for anything more than quick updates to my patrons for very specific things I may or may not need non-patrons to see, so personally I wouldn’t want this turned on by default. But perhaps you could add it like a “read more” feature, so it’s more flexible.

Eh, I prefer the blur, though I’d be okay with slightly less blur being applied. I think the dark overlay reveals too much, and if this were added I’d be likely to use gallery posts for everything so I can further obscure Patreon-exclusive art. It would just end up being a hassle really.

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Are you currently creating teaser text for your posts? Why or why not?

Yes, but I’m not sure people engage with the teaser text, I’m largely an illustrator, so images would be a better way to do previews for my campaign.

Would you want to provide fans with teasers of locked content for all post types or specific ones?

I would want to be able to choose which posts preview with images. I’m a adult content creator and I need to be very specific with the things I show people publicly. I’d like to be able to choose general audience edited versions of images to show the public. That way my account meets patreon policies, but I can still tease image posts.

How much content would you want fans to be able to preview for text posts?

A single image should be sufficient for a preview for image posts. There might be some text that signifies there are more images in an image gallery like “See this and 14 more images by subscribing to the $x tier” - but I think image gallery previews aren’t necessary for my campaign and would prefer just one image in the preview (it looks nicer too).

I think poll posts should also allow previewing in their entirety (but not allow voting) with an opt-in option, polls are a great way to be interactive and if people could see the stuff they could be voting on, they would probably be more likely to subscribe and vote.

My other campaign also drives up subscribers and poll participation by screenshotting the results and posting it to non-subscribers and lower tier subscribers to encourage people to participate.

What are your thoughts on having a dark overlay on image posts?

I think it should be optional on single image posts, I would definitely prefer to use a non-darkened overlay preview image that I created specifically for the preview.

In short: As an illustrator that works in adult content I would love to have the option to show a single selected image preview. This image would have to meet public post guidelines, so I would need a way to choose it or add a unique image as the preview, but it would be far more useful than the current blur.

I’d also like polls to (optionally) display publicly so the public can see poll options and they might be enticed to subscribe so that they can vote on the topic.

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This is sort of ancillary, but at the same time could we please have the ability to NOT send the whole post out in an email? No one ever actually comes to my patreon page because they get the whole post in their email.

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I prefer the 2nd (darkened) image. I would want to make sure only the first sentence or two of the text is visible since I include things like unlisted links in my descriptions.

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I don’t use teaser text. Most of my patrons are lower tier members, and upsell features that I can’t control feel sleazy.

What I mean is that trying to get someone who can see 95% of my content already to double their pledge so they can see a single poll or something dumb like that feels out of touch, value wise.

If I use a tier lock as segmentation, then it’s a real blunder to tease a post. For example, can you imagine upgrading tour pledge to unlock a post that says, “Hey all, thinking of getting rid of this tier, pls fill out this poll…” Not all posts are “value”, some are just communication. Those should never be teased or used as upgrade bait, it’s a bad experience for the person upgrading.

In short, I need to control my own marketing.

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Thanks for the feedback @michaelprescott! We hadn’t yet considered the use case where tiers are being used for segmentation, but will definitely need to explore that further.

How often are you using text posts for communication? Do you differentiate your post types by titles, ie. creations/content versus communication? Or would it help to be able to differentiate them through another method?

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